


Swim With Me

by KendylGirl



Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017), Call Me by Your Name - André Aciman
Genre: Happy Ending, Light Angst, Love Confessions, M/M, Morning After, lots of fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-11
Updated: 2020-01-11
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:27:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22214785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KendylGirl/pseuds/KendylGirl
Summary: After their first night together, Elio and Oliver go to the river and decide they should swim together.
Relationships: Oliver/Elio Perlman
Comments: 46
Kudos: 157





	Swim With Me

**Author's Note:**

> I dreamed about this, woke up at an ungodly hour, and wrote most of it before even getting out of bed. I wish I understood how to wrangle inspiration, but I could not resist it when it finally paid my feeble mind a visit.
> 
> My grateful thanks to Willowbrooke again for oiling out all of the creaks! 😊

The clunk of the door in the garden wall is loud in the thick blanket of early dawn.We walk our bikes out of the narrow confines of the villa’s backyard haven where the sun had first warmed the air, warmed it just for us, before it had to share with the rest of the world.The breeze on the street had swept all of that away.

And I wanted it to.I needed the clarity of the cold.

Oliver is silent next to me, pensive, and I swear I can hear the creak of words jammed in his throat, of the apologies and regrets, of all the things we didn’t say to each other last night when the only words we had for one another were simple ones.Curses and sighs and _more more more_.

Once we get to the river, we separate, him staying near the shallows, while I go for the deeper end where few others bother to go.He observes me from the cover of a lazy backstroke with his face turned to the morning sun, as if he doesn’t want me to suspect that he is paying attention to me at all, as if the sun were the only important thing about the entire day.As if I don’t have a crust of him still in the dip of my clavicle.As if I still can’t hear his gasp when I had pulled his hair to coax his mouth to open wider.As if my shoulder joints are not still tender and stiff from the effort of holding myself up to record every minute of him swallowing me down.I continue to circle around in the frigid central pool of the river’s bend until I see him arch his body like a knife and dive down.He is coming to me. I watch the water ripple in his wake, his smooth strokes making soft artful eddies at the surface, and when he finally comes up, he is only a few feet away. 

“You’ll tire too fast out here, Elio,” he teases.“Maybe you should go back to the shore.”

“Maybe you should come further.”I keep my eyes with his.My secrets are few, and from him, I have nothing to hide any longer. 

“What if I get tired?Would you let me drown out here all alone?”

“You’re not alone.I am right here with you.”

“Are you?”

“Of course I am.”I drive my arms through the water between us, let the wave splash his neck, his cheeks.“Feel that?That’s me.” _Feel me, Oliver.I’m on you constantly but your skin has that oily barrier that won’t let me soak into you, won’t let your fingertips prune, letting me through, letting me mark you on the inside_.

“You’re the water?”He smirks at me, runs his wet hand through the feathers of his hair and slicks them back from his soft temples. I want to put my lips there, taste where his skin is tender and thin. “Well, no wonder.”

“No wonder what?”

“No wonder you’re never the same person.”

“What are you talking about?I’ve been the same since you met me.”

“No, Elio.No, you haven’t.You’re always in motion.You never sit still even when you haven’t moved a muscle. It’s...”And he shrugs, floats left a bit, and says no more.

I surge forward.“It’s what?Tell me.What am I to you, Oliver?”

His eyes are an odd indigo.“You are a paradox.”

“Am I?”

“In every way."

“What does that mean?"I feel like I’m sinking, so I kick out my limbs harder through the water to keep myself afloat. 

He fixes me with that gaze of his, that intensity which I’ve feared from the start.“You are brashness and reason, ignorance and intelligence, married in perfect amounts to form one.And maybe that is why you rush like the river every minute of every day, because if you didn’t, you’d cease to _be_ Elio.You are the oldest soul I’ve known in the youngest body, one I have _craved_ , craved like I’ve waited my whole life to consume it lest I starve to death.”His lips tremor.“You are good, so fucking _good_ , and when I let myself...when we are together...when we are _bad_ together...you make me better than I ever thought I could be.”

My mind feels numb.“Are you…is that the truth?”

“Every word.”

My throat muscles struggle against themselves, and my voice emerges as a rasp.“Then come to me.Come to me right now.”

"I don’t know if I can do that.”

“But why?”

He exhales slowly, as acquiescence, as certain defeat.“I’m afraid you’ll swim away and leave me out here, and I won’t have the strength to get back to where I was.”

I lick my lips, let my eyes bore into him and plead for me, let them beg. “Trust me, Oliver.Why can’t you just _trust_ me?”

His eyebrows pinch, and I can see it finally, his oppressive fear, his well-worn uncertainty, and I recognize it because it is a mirror to my own, which has swirled in my gut since the day Oliver arrived, since he had climbed out of our tiny car and made a self-deprecating joke about his giant body, the lithe, golden body that had made my mouth dry in just that single glance at him from above.“I don’t want to drown.”

“You won’t. I promise.”

“But how do I know that?” 

“I’m a very good swimmer,” I tell him, my eyes riveted to his, my only tether.“I’m stronger than I look.”

A small smile.“Yes, you are. I know that you are.”

“And I know things about the water, Oliver.Things you don’t.”My jaw clenches.“Things that matter.”

“I...”He swallows with effort.“I believe that you do.I learned how to swim when I was younger, Elio, but I never...I have never spent much time getting to know the water the way that I should.”

“Then, let me teach you how.”I hold out my hand.“Come to me.”

He stares at my hand, expression indecipherable, and a frisson of fear skittles down my spine.

“Come to me,” I urge once more, raising my palm above the water.“Please?” and as a mere breath, “Elio…” 

His face changes, grows raw, owned at last by the emotion that roils in him constantly, left utterly unguarded now, just as it had been in the darkness when he had held me tight, pressed his lips and his name to the slick skin of my forehead, and climaxed inside of me.

Slowly, and it’s so _achingly_ slow, he finally swims close enough to let his fingers twine with mine.I tug gently, and he floats the rest of the way until he is with me, until I feel his heat, what he’s saved for me and not lost to the rest of the water. 

I reach down with my other hand, follow the smooth line of his body, around the powerful jut of his ass, fingers drifting. I nudge his thigh from behind, pull it toward me, too.“Relax.Let this fall.”

“What?”

“Stand, Oliver.”

His eyebrows flicker, but he is with me now, and he obeys. And when his feet hit the sandbar, his jaw drops, and he barks a surprised laugh.“I don’t believe it!” 

I smile smugly.

“You tricked me!”

“No, I didn’t!You’re a philosopher, Oliver.Haven’t you learned to believe in things you cannot see with the naked eye?"

His face reddens, and he shrugs.“I do...I mean, I thought I had.But this is different.”

“How is this any different?”

His lips turn up at the corners, and his voice drops to a whisper.“Love isn’t a philosophy, Elio.”

I lay my hand on his chest.“Yes, it is, Oliver.It is a leap of faith.It is believing in something that cannot fully exist until you _do_ believe!”

His hand covers mine.“I do believe. I do, Elio.” 

I can’t answer. I push up on my toes and kiss him, let him lift me off the ground with one arm around my waist so that I can hover above him for a few precious moments, speaking everything I need to say with his tongue, his lips, which are my own.

I hook my arms around his neck, my legs around his waist, let him anchor me in the gentle current. 

He sighs and kisses my temple, my cheek.“Won’t you get sick of me?”

My teeth graze his earlobe.“What’s that?Get sick of whom?

“Me.”

“Who?"

He huffs, and I feel him roll his eyes impatiently. “ _Elio_.”

“Exactly.”

“What are you—“ And then I feel his shoulder muscles relax as his arms crush me to him, his nose under my chin.“Why am I such an idiot?” he murmurs. 

I smile, let my eyes sink closed, revel in the way his finger pads circle over my ribs.“I may know a lot of other things, Oliver, but I’ll never have an answer to _that_ question.”

He laughs with a warmth that lights me up from the inside.“Me, either.”

“You’re still being an idiot, though.” 

His hands caress my back, scoop under the globes of my ass, massage them with reverence.“And why is that?”

He’s teasing me again.He has to know.He has to feel that I am rock hard against him, that I feel him, too, pressed against the bend of my hip, that my heart is pounding so forcefully that it moves my body back with each beat and causes a small stream of water between us to foam.

He has to know. 

I give my hips a deep roll, let his groan feed another, and another. His hot breath on my neck makes me shiver. “Take me home, Elio,” I beg.“Take me to our bed.”

“I will, my Oliver,” he rumbles, his roaming fingers circle my hole, again and again, make my breath ragged, my nerves sing.“My Elio, my angel, myself, I will...”

And he pushes off from the shifting sands beneath his feet, taking us through the deep waters ahead of us, guiding our way to the opposite shore.

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes I get to the end of a piece and look back at it and realize that nearly every word I've written has something else that it really wants to say. Perhaps that is why Oliver and Elio fascinate me so!
> 
> If you've been good enough to read this, please let me know what you think!
> 
> If you're feeling ultra-generous, I would love it if you would check out some of my other works! ❤️


End file.
